Living a labelled life

Like a little nametag on my neck,
On a masterpiece, a tiny speck,
A character in a fable,
You finally are a label

Stereotyping. Try running away from it or denying it but every single person does it and falls into it. What is it? It is basically categorising the ‘not so unique’ qualities of people and giving it a name. Even in school there are tags like the jock, the popular ones, the nerds or the mean girl. When we grow up there are more tags in our work environments and this labelling never really stops.

Every person is unique, but then, doesn’t unique become a category of itself? Everyone wants to ‘stand out’. We humans walk around with a label on our heads in every part of our life. You are your gender, you are your age, you are your religion, you are your looks, you are your qualification, you are your ideas. You are an embodiment of every aspect that you want or have in your life. You yourself, are a label. So every time someone says that they want to be ‘different’ or be ‘themselves’ I have a question in my head. How do you be ‘yourself’ when you are just a collection of various other selves? A little from the parents, a little from the friends and a little from the strangers you might never see again.

We all are products of the innumerable and wonderful qualities we have embraced from the people around us and this makes us who we are. Sometimes the best part of having a label is to break from it and show a different side of us. But when we break from a label we become another label and are now part of another category and this is the reality we all are living with. Human beings are social animals and at all times in life we will always look for acceptance and re-acceptance in some way or the other and ‘fitting in’ and having people like you around you is comforting. Be it in school, or later in work life, these labels will always follow us, but it is we who need to decide whether we want this label to be the whole and sole of our personality, or have multiple labels and show the world that these are just tags that change with time.

So, stop saying you don’t want to be labeled. Because you always will be, and you always will be associated with a variety of qualities. Instead, make your own label. Work so hard and be so YOU that there’s a label that is yours. Go on, emboss your name in, not gold, but platinum, on the board that the world gives you.

(The author is your everyday adolescent who thrives on gossip and yet brings her brutal honesty to her YouTube chat show with celebrities)

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